Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

published

2011-12-27

rating

4

The author of this book uses psychology to understand happiness and how to live an enjoyable life. The theory of flow says that people enjoy experience the most when they are "living in flow." This state is obtained when a person is being challenged, but has the required skills to meet the challenge, and also is obtaining frequent feedback to the effect that he or she is succeeding. It also explains that flow is pleasurable because it causes a minimization of psychic entropy and emphasizes the importance of attention in attaining flow. I thought it started off great, but became repetitive after about the first four chapters. I would probably recommend only reading the first four chapters. But overall I thought it was very insightful and philosophically valuable.